Summer Support Requests

Please note that due to summer holiday schedules, support ticket response time may be delayed and will be operated on a best-efforts basis. We appreciate your patience and to resuming full operations in the fall! Comments and feedback is always welcome to info@westgrid.ca as we work to continually improve our efforts to support your research.

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WestGrid Computing Facilities

Introduction

WestGrid's computing facilities are part of Compute Canada's national platform of Advanced Research Computing resources. The Compute Canada computing facilities are distributed among several resource provider sites and connected by high-performance networks so that users can access the system which best fits their needs, regardless of where it is physically located. The systems are for high performance computing, so they are something beyond what you would find on a desktop.

Which system should you use?

Use the system which best fits your needs, not necessarily the one closest to you.

National Sites

Compute Canada's new national sites offer expandable and modern data centres with highly qualified personnel. Operations of the new systems are delivered through national teams, drawing upon regional and local expertise distributed across Canada.

Please note: Orcinus is being minimally supported this RAC 2018 year (until Mar.31, 2019) as a "bonus" to tide us over while new resources are installed. New software is being installed only on the new systems through the national software distribution service. We recommend that you consider migrating to the new national systems Cedar or Graham.

Phase 1: 384 nodes, 3072 cores

8 cores/node

Xeon E5450 3.0GHz

16 GB Ram

DDR IB

Phase 2: 554 nodes, 6528 cores

12 cores/node

Xeon X5650 2.66 GHz

QDR IB

IB with 2:1 blocking factor

Phase 1 and Phase 2 share filesystems but otherwise run as separate systems

Defunded Systems

***NOTE: On September 1, 2017, Breezy was withdrawn from general WestGrid service. It is now available only to approved University of Calgary-based projects. This is part of a continuing process for handling the retirement of WestGrid systems. Please visit the Migration Process page for more information. Questions regarding Breezy should now be directed to support@hpc.ucalgary.ca, rather than support@westgrid.ca.

***NOTE: On September 1, 2017, Lattice was withdrawn from general WestGrid service. It is now available only to approved University of Calgary-based projects. Questions regarding Lattice should now be directed to support@hpc.ucalgary.ca, rather than support@westgrid.ca.

Retired WestGrid Systems

Some older WestGrid systems have been removed from general service, typically being replaced with more energy-efficient machines with more capability.

Machine name

Period of Service

Description

Silo

Dec. 2008 - Mar. 2017

Silo was the primary storage facility at WestGrid with over 3.15 PB (3150 TB) of spinning disk. It was an archival facility, which was backed up. There were two main login servers: Silo and Hopper. Silo and Hopper shared filesystems.